Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018. Amanda Robson

Someone else turning her mind in on itself to close it down and allow time to pass in a mist.

      After a while, the grey middle-aged guard is standing in front of her again. ‘You’ve got a legal visit. Your brief.’

      She is ushered along a winding corridor, through two metal gates, and escorted into a legal visit room. A man is sitting waiting for her. A man who looks about her age. He stands up when she enters the room. He has golden amber eyes and auburn hair with a wave in it that caresses the top of his shoulders. The shoulders of a rugby player. Smiling at her with a wide dimpled smile. He moves around the plastic table he was sitting at to stand in front of her.

      ‘Hi, I’m Theo Gregson, your brief.’ His voice is strong and deep.

      He takes her hand in his and squeezes it lightly. Her eyes are caught in his. He doesn’t look like a barrister. He looks like the front man in a sexually pumped-up rock band. Springy and virile. About to go on stage to play a riff.

      He removes his hand from hers.‘Let’s sit down and talk about the bail application.’

      He sits back down at the other side of the table; she sits opposite him. He pushes his hair back from his eyes.

      ‘I’ve read the papers so far. Bail isn’t normally granted for the defendant in a murder trial, but you have made it quite clear from the moment the police arrived that you acted in self-defence so I am going to give it a go.’

      She looks into his amber eyes.

      ‘Thanks.’

      Time has melted away. She is sitting in the dock, behind a wall of glass, next to a rotund guard with a red face. She looks across at her mother in the front row of the public gallery, head turned anxiously towards her. She smiles at her across the courtroom. A whisper of a smile, tangled by grief. Her mother is wearing her best black trouser suit and a baggy frilly blouse, which disguises her love handles. Her heart shreds as she looks at her, eyes stinging with tears.

      She searches the courtroom for Sebastian. He is not here.

      The lawyers are sitting at the rows of wooden workbenches in the middle of the court. Richard Mimms and the rock star brief, heads together in deep discussion. Her heart leaps for a second. Are they really going to get her out? Then the heavy leaden feeling in her stomach expands and takes over. Wherever she goes from now on her sister won’t be there. Will going home help? Will her memories of her sister assuage the guilt or make it worse?

      In the distance of her mind, she sees lawyers on the other side of the court. A tall thin brief, talking to a small pretty Asian woman with a neat face. Lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service. Must be. She can’t bear to look at them. She looks at the floor. At her feet, clad in the sensible flat pumps her mother brought into the custody suite for her to wear. Then she raises her head to check for Sebastian again. He still isn’t there.

      The guard nudges her. The court is rising for the judge’s entrance. A judge with a leonine face, wearing blood-red robes. He enters slowly, gracefully, like a swan or a king. He bows to the court and they sit. He asks her barrister to present his case.

      Theo Gregson stands. Bull-like shoulders. Strong hair escaping beneath his wig, making his wig balance awkwardly on his head, like a small hat. He coughs a little before he speaks. The judge is watching him like a hawk.

      ‘I request bail for my client, the defendant, a responsible citizen. No previous brush with the law of any kind. She has stabbed and killed her sister in self-defence. She made that point quite clear from the initial point of contact with the emergency services. She presents no flight risk or danger to the public.’ He pauses. ‘I request bail in these circumstances as my client’s emotional vulnerability after losing her sister means she should be at home, not in prison.’

      ‘Thank you, Mr Gregson,’ the judge says. His voice is long-vowelled. Almost ecclesiastical.

      Mr Gregson sits down.

      ‘Have the Crown Prosecution Service any comments on this?’ the judge asks.

      A barrister from the other side of the benches stands up. The one she noticed earlier with a long thin back.

      ‘We oppose bail. She is so emotionally vulnerable that she has stabbed and killed her sister. We believe it is safer for all concerned, including the defendant herself, if she remains in custody.’

      The judge frowns for a second.

      ‘Bail denied.’

       THE PAST

       6

       Miranda

      The doorbell rings. I open the door. You step into our box of a hallway holding his hand, eyes stuck to his like plaster. Reluctantly your eyes separate and you introduce him to me. Sebastian.

      ‘Hi,’ he says and fixes his eyes into mine for a second too long.

      ‘Hi.’

      I think he needs a shave. He is wearing designer jeans: pale blue, with carefully placed rips. Well-worn brown suede boots. Black cashmere round-neck sweater. He has a black stud in his left ear – subtle but quirky. I feel his almost-designer stubble as he leans forward to kiss me. He smells of mint. He must have just cleaned his teeth. We move two steps into our sitting room-cum-kitchen.

      ‘Good to meet you, Sis,’ he says.

      ‘Please call me Miranda,’ I reply with a smile.

      ‘Of course, Miranda. Far more glamorous than Sis.’

      ‘Not as glamorous as Sebastian.’

      He grins. His grin is a major weapon in the artillery of his attractiveness.

      ‘I suppose my name is a little flowery.’ He pauses. ‘Not as compact as Jude.’

      ‘What’s Jude got to do with it?’ I ask.

      ‘Nothing.’ He grins again. ‘Just the name of someone I once knew.’

      Zara, you and your lover follow me towards the sofa, wrapped together like a pair of climbing plants. I pour you a glass of wine each, which you untangle yourselves to accept, and then we all sit in a row: Sebastian in the middle on our large brown sofa, my left thigh pressed against his right. I shift away a little. He turns to me and gives me another shot of his grin. I hold steady, lowering my eyes. I don’t grin back.

      He takes a sip of wine and asks, ‘How’s your job going?’

      ‘Hard work. Heavy hours but it’s rewarding all the same.’

      ‘Did Zara tell you I had an interview with Harrison Goddard?’

      I try to suppress a grin. ‘She might have mentioned it; she does sometimes talk about you,’ I say.

      ‘They’ve just offered. Today.’ There is a pause. ‘I’ve already accepted.’

      My stomach tightens. So. My sister’s boyfriend is coming to work in my office. A man with dangerous eyes and an over-exuberant grin.

      ‘When do you start?’ I ask.

      ‘Next week.’

      ‘Be prepared. They like to take their pound of flesh.’

      ‘That’s why I love photography,’ you chip in. ‘It gives me freedom and range.’

      My stomach curdles as you say that. It sounds so pseudy. But it’s true, you have always loved photography, ever since you were a young girl.

      ‘I’m used to it. The firm I came from in London were just the same,’ Sebastian continues.

      ‘What made you leave London?’ I ask for the sake of something to